How to Make Your Sales Page Fail

I came across an email that led to a sales page not too long ago. It wasn’t bad (it had a nice lay­out), but there was one aspect that I wanted to point out that prob­a­bly lost them some sales. It didn’t con­sider the read­ers and poten­tial buyers.

Even now, I’m still not sure what the prod­uct even was, other than it was a work­book, cd, and a cer­tifi­cate of some sort. That was the big mis­take I wanted to point out. It wasn’t clear on what the prod­uct actu­ally did.

And the other mis­take is a lit­tle more com­mon. The page never made any kind of solu­tion for the reader(me). Almost the whole page was about how much money they made with their pro­gram, and how much they are mak­ing now. It was all about them, and noth­ing about me.

Let’s look into these two mis­takes a lit­tle bit more.

What is this?
I may have been the wrong tar­get audi­ence, I don’t know, but I like to have a lit­tle infor­ma­tion about some­thing before I com­mit. I didn’t even know what the thing was sup­posed to teach me. Obvi­ously it was sup­posed to make me money. But so does every­thing else. It didn’t get into the how or why it works. And I think that’s pretty impor­tant. If any­thing, give me a taste of it so I could form and idea of how it would help me make money. Tease me a bit and make me curi­ous.

What’s in it for me?
This is a pretty big one that a lot of peo­ple tend to miss. When you think of your tar­get audi­ence, remem­ber they are there to solve their prob­lems. If there is a pos­si­bil­ity to get some sort of prob­lem solved with your prod­uct they will check it out. But your copy has to be cen­tered around them. Here’s a lit­tle exer­cise that can help you come up with some great ben­e­fits and solutions.

“So What?“
Think of your tar­get audi­ence and what they may be like. Think of what your offer gives to them if they buy. For every bit of info you put into your copy, think from the point of view of your poten­tial customer:

“so what?“
“What is in it for me?“
“Why should I need to buy your prod­uct?“
“What will this prod­uct do for me?”

Sure, this prod­uct appar­ently can make me a lot of money. So what? Why is it that your prod­uct can make me money? Then you want to dig deeper than that. To an emo­tional level. What will hav­ing all this money do? What kind of lifestyle could I have if I could make this much? And so on.

So you really need to look at it from your read­ers point of view. It varies, depend­ing on who your tar­get audi­ence is. Who your poten­tial buy­ers are. But your copy must get them excited. It has to get them think­ing about actu­ally mak­ing that much money. Say­ing you could make this much with this pro­gram is not enough.

This sales page I’m refer­ring to only told me one thing. That he was mak­ing tons of money. That was about it. He showed how much money he was mak­ing and had some tes­ti­mo­ni­als and what not. But in the end I was still won­der­ing what was in it for me besides mak­ing money, which every­thing promises.

So maybe keep these ideas in mind next time your work­ing on a sales page. Place your­self in your poten­tial cus­tomers shoes.

~Chris

Have you been to a sales page that basi­cally made you hit back but­ton as soon as you got there? Share your sto­ries.

Sim­i­lar Posts:

• A Video as a Sales Page
• Is Your Being Nice Scar­ing Peo­ple Off?
• How to Make Your Busi­ness Stand Out

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